Using a CF to IDE Adapter to create a SSD(Solid State Disk) Part 2

Additional stuff.

As some of you might know, the HP Compaq NC4010 laptop does not come with a built in CD/DVD drive. The one I was using also did not have the CD/DVD drive connected and I was too lazy to connect one to the laptop. Eager to try out the CF-IDE adapter after inserting it into the laptop, I insert a bootable USB flash media and booted the laptop up to win98 DOS. Next, I ran FDISK and partitioned the CF card, rebooted the laptop and formatted the CF card with DOS as a bootable disk. I then took out the USB flash media and tried to boot the laptop solely using the CF card. The laptop after booted pass the BIOS screen, cleared the screen and got stuck with a blinking cursor on the top left hand corner. Nothing happened after that. I thought it could not boot. So, I plug my bootable USB back into the laptop and booted it up from there. I ran FDISK again, but this time I found that the CF(disk 2 in FDISK) could not be made an “Active” drive because “disk 1”(the USB flash media) is already “Active”. Disk 2 could not be made “Active” because only a single disk can only be made “Active” at one time.

To go around this problem, you could take out the CF card and format it under windows or you can download a DOS disk partitioning program called AEFDISK(http://www.aefdisk.com/). It should solve the above problem.

To format a the CF card under windows(XP), all you need to do is use go to “Control Panel”-> Administrative Tools-> Computer Management.->Disk Management. Locate your CF card, right click to on it and choose “format”.

Make sure that after format finishes it says “Active”.

Another method you can use is to use a USB formatting utility. Go to http://h50178.www5.hp.com/support/470035-692/more_info_local_17019.html and download the “Windows-based Format Utility for HP DiskOnKey USB Device”. It is a USB formatting utility program from HP. The web link points to a HP Taiwan site but the software is in English, so don’t worry. Click on the button to the right of the word “SP27213.exe (1.98 MB)” to download. You will also need the DOS files. You can get it from this link http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm.

Screen shot of the USB formatting Tool.

Do remember that you need to use FAT32 for any disk size greater then 2Gb.

Installing XP Pro – Time measurement.

(Note : Time measurements based on a Kingston 8Gb X133 CF card)

After the hardware installation, its time to move forward to the next phase and install the OS : Windows XP Pro. The Windows XP Pro version that we will be using are slipped streamed with Service Pack 3. There is something that you might want to know, the higher the service pack number, the more physical memory it will use up upon boot up. This is because there is an increase in the number of processes. So, do have plenty of memory added to your laptop/PC. The laptop that I am working on has 1Gb of memory. After booting up, the processes alone have taken up about 230Mb of working memory. I have also remove the pagefile to decrease the frequency of disk writing by the OS.

Do remember not to connect the laptop/PC to the internet before installing anti-virus software. Download the anti-virus installation files and virus definition files onto a USB flash and do it from there. After installation of the anti-virus software, don’t forget to update the virus list to the latest virus definition. All these have to be done without connecting to the internet because doing so will expose the laptop/PC to the many viruses that are still out there in the internet.

Here is a breakdown on the time taken for each step that I’ve gone through while installing the OS and drivers. Are you ready? Here we go :

Phase One – DOS level HDD format and copying of files = about 22mins

Phase two – Booted to graphics mode and installation of XP (First prompt for input) = about 23mins. (The rest of the process) = about 1hr 15mins.

Phase three - Boot up to windows and prompt to create first user = about 10 mins.

(note: sound volume control(wav) is at max setting. I got a shock when it started playing the music. Plugging in anything into the audio output port will not stop it blasting out from the speakers).

Shutdown – Time taken to save and initiate proper shutdown = about1.15 mins.

Boot up – From XP Pro Boot screen till complete boot up without any further HDD activity. = about 1.2 mins.

The following is a list of timings taken while installing the necessary drivers on the laptop (for HP Compaq NC4010). This will give a rough idea of the time taken for each driver. Here we go :

Note : A USB flash with all the necessary drivers is inserted into the laptop. The drivers are loaded from the USB flash directly. Prior to installing the drivers, the pagefile was removed to reduce the amount of HDD access by the OS.

- Install ATI display driver (SP31674) (express setup) – about 10mins

- Install Audio driver (SP26997) – about 5mins

- Install Quick Launch Button driver (SP29528) – about 2 mins

- Install Broadcom network driver (SP29697) – about 4 mins

- Turn on Wi-fi & Bluetooth

o Install Bluetooth Driver (SP28427) – about 11 mins

o Install Wi-Fi Driver (SP32579) – about 5 mins

o Install Wi-Fi Client (SP32586) – about 8 mins

- Install USB driver (SP27957) – about 5 mins

- Install Card Reader Driver (SP25081 & SP24428) – about 10 mins

- Install Modem(Agere System 97 Modem) driver (SP30332) – about 5 mins

Total disk space consumed after all essential drivers are installed = about 2.0Gb.

The End.